Farmers Weekly

4 days ago | fwi.co.uk | Jonathan Riley

Farm support is being cut back and the replacement environmental schemes require significant management costs to maintain. It means that even a field-by-field approach to cost management may not ensure financial margins can be sustained in the long-term. Instead, farmers and growers are being urged to look at cost and output figures in greater detail from areas within individual fields to make more informed decisions. This so-called sub-field approach means collecting and interpreting more data.

1 week ago | fwi.co.uk | Philip Clarke

Ask broiler grower and consultant Chris Wright, Farmers Weekly‘s Poultry Farmer of the Year, what gives him the most satisfaction working in the poultry sector. He will freely admit it is when someone he is advising manages to raise their European Production Efficiency Factor (EPEF) score to more than 450. This calculation takes into account feed conversion, mortality and daily weight gain.

1 week ago | fwi.co.uk | Charlie Reeve

The NFU is planning a fresh campaign to engage directly with Labour MPs in rural constituencies, to convince them of the folly of the chancellor’s plan to impose inheritance tax (IHT) on family farms. Lobbying by the NFU to alter the government’s controversial changes to IHT, have so far fallen on deaf ears at the Treasury. This is despite mass farming rallies in Westminster and suggestions of a clawback mechanism as an alternative approach for government.

1 week ago | fwi.co.uk | Louise Impey

The constant challenges of farming are nothing new. But with the political and economic uncertainty of recent times, many farmers are coping with heightened anxiety and stress. Personal resilience – keeping a positive mindset and a can-do attitude – has therefore never been more important. See also: Why one Essex arable farm faces difficult decisions in 2025Rethinking your relationship with time may help in the current climate, suggests farmer, podcaster and consultant Michael Blanche.

2 weeks ago | fwi.co.uk | Andrew Meredith

“You can have as many people and as much money as you want, as long as we don’t run out of food,” read the text message that flashed up on the mobile phone of Minette Batters. Not the mandate she was given from Steve Reed as she starts her new job as Defra’s consultant on farm profitability, but the message from a panicking minister to the then NFU president in the early days of Covid.